Like all great direct marketing, the Obama campaigns made much use of tried-and-tested techniques, such as member-get-member programmes, contests and A/B testing. The famous “I will be outspent” letter underwent 17 versions in tests before it was sent to the broad list. And it raised $2.4 million in one day. It began in 2004 with the campaign for the Democratic nomination of Howard Dean, when the tail end of the anti-war protest converged with the hangover of the dot.com bust. One of the young survivors of the latter was a charismatic whiplash of energy, Thomas Gensemer, who, along with Joe Rospars and other founders of the firm that became known as Blue State Digital, played around with email marketing and database management to help cohere an anti-war coalition which spanned young and old. The money flowed in to the Democratic campaign: and that, as Thomas says, “sort of changed the way that we all saw the economics of campaigning”.